Army Captain jailed for downloading 1,200 images of child pornography 'because he was bored'

Friday 23 November 2007 06:22 BST

The army captain has been jailed after downloading 1,200 images of child pornography (Posed by model)

An army captain has been jailed after downloading 1,200 images of child pornography because he was "bored".

Iraq War veteran Gary Michael Smith, 30, admitted ten specimen charges of making an indecent photograph of a child before a court martial in Osnabr¸ck, Germany.

He was jailed for two years by the five-strong panel, ordered to be dismissed with disgrace and told he would be forbidden from ever working with children.

Lieutenant Colonel Mark Dakers, prosecuting, told the court how Smith - based in Paderborn, Germany, with the 1st Battalion, The Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment --downloaded the material while temporarily attached to the regiment's TA battalion in Canterbury, Kent.

He described how the crime was discovered "completely by chance" in November 2005 when a fellow officer used Smith's password-protected computer to access the Internet.

Listed under favourites, he found the shocking images.

Some 171 were rated level four on the Copine scale, used to categorise the severity of pornographic pictures of children.

On the scale, level one is described as erotic posing and level five as being the most sexually explicit.

When interviewed, Smith, who has been awarded the Queen's Jubilee Medal as well as the Iraq Medal and the Nato Medal during his 12 years' service, claimed he had been viewing adult porn sites.

But he admitted his guilt when confronted with the results of the forensic computer analysis, which had taken almost two years.

Defence counsel Chris Hill claimed Smith's actions had been the result of "morbid curiosity" and that, after being transferred to the TA unit in 2004, found himself "with no activity, very little to do".

He said: "He's not a paedophile, but did - as many people do when they are bored or in their darker moments - start cruising the Internet and sought out those sites.

"Smith finds it hard to understand how he could behave in such a way.

"He has effectively destroyed a very promising career as an Army officer and this causes him great pain. It is all through his own fault."

Judge Advocate Michael Elsom said: "The effect of these offences cannot be over-emphasised - those who suffer the most are the children who are abused."